Step Inside a Cozy Connecticut Home by AD100 Designer Stephen Sills

“Lauren’s so good with fabrics and combinations—and Richard has so many wonderful pieces he’s created, his art—it was just a joyous thing, sort of a no-brainer,” Sills shares of the three-year-long project. “Her love of patterns and textiles is seen in her wardrobe and her home,” observes another close friend, Aerin Lauder, with whom Lauren works as a creative consultant. “The unexpected mix of colors and patterns creates a warm, beautiful, and inviting space, with whimsical elements of surprise.”

That recognizable personal style—which Lauren is quick to credit Sills for amplifying, particularly with regard to color and scale—is evident upon entering the sunroom. With its high ceilings and four exposures, the biophilic space, at one with the manicured grounds just outside, underscores what Sills refers to as her “sophisticated approach to objects and the mix of things”: an oversized ottoman upholstered in a Hazelton House floral, curtains of a Michael S. Smith ivy print fabric, a set of six Cy Twombly prints, breezy wicker and bamboo pieces, all against the warm background of Sydney Harbour’s Meringue-painted walls. It’s Richard’s favorite room, where the family gathers to celebrate Christmas.

The nearby dining room, meanwhile, was expanded to incorporate a formerly dark and cramped office, an inspired move that not only created enough space to accommodate large family gatherings around an antique Irish table but also exposed another working fireplace. Aside from a lone abstract painting by Daniel Hesidence and Swedish sconces, the walls were left unadorned, allowing the leaf-covered surfaces, which were hand-painted and then scumbled, to shine. “This is a real Stephen signature,” says Lauren of the surface treatment, a clever complement to the printed Rose Tarlow Melrose House linen used for the curtains.

Sills is no precious snob, Lauren insists, relating how he hand-mixed a wall color, spontaneously hammered in tapestries, and, sloshing paint around, marbleized a pair of console tables one evening over martinis. “He’s like, ‘I’m creating! Let me create!’” she recalls, highlighting a human quality that’s evident throughout.

Case in point: the formal living room’s collection of organic enamel-on-paper drawings that Richard, inspired by a photograph of Henri Matisse’s studio, created specifically for the room. “The thing about this house is that it has a formality to it in some ways, but it also has an informality to it,” Richard notes. Next door, in the library, where one of only two household TVs is stationed, vintage round brass-and-glass cocktail tables commingle with curtains and a pair of armchairs in a Jasper Tree of Life fabric that Lauren had held on to for years. The textile is a natural fit alongside crewelwork panels bought at a Doyle auction.

In Lauren’s upstairs office, a Louis XV mantel that Sills had stored in his barn—and which he agreed to sell if it fit, and it did, “like Cinderella,” she says— complements an eclectic mix of items. An antique daybed and Egyptian caned chair stand on a printed jute rug from Ballard Designs beneath a silkscreen made with chocolate by Dieter Roth. The desk chair dates from Lauren’s first Manhattan apartment, back when she was an assistant at Vogue and her kitchen was stocked only with “Champagne and some potatoes.”

The other upstairs rooms are just as personal and rich in backstory. The primary bedroom’s scheme was informed by a vintage Pierre Frey blue chintz from Richard’s mother, while their musician daughter’s room echoes her vibrant personality with a red Les Indiennes floral textile and a graphic work by New Orleans artist Willie White. Throughout these rooms, as well as the whole house, carefully selected art reflects both Richard’s own hand and his breadth of personal relationships: in the entry hall, a piece by Antiguan artist Frank Walter, whom Richard stumbled upon in St. John’s decades ago, and in the kitchen, several paintings by the late Roy Newell, a longtime friend. Here and there, charming carved-wood animals—a beaver, bear, owls—by the Duponts’ Maine chum Dan Falt bring smiles.

Back outside, pausing in one of several intimate seating areas that open off the ground floor—surrounded by roses, boxwoods, and beech trees—the couple muse on what ultimately pulled them away from their beloved New York to this particular property. “Just leaving the city, spending more time outside, I think makes me more creative in so many different ways,” Lauren says, smiling at Richard. “I just love it.”

This Stephen Sills–designed Connecticut home appears in AD’s Style issue. Never miss an issue when you subscribe to AD.